accelerando
by Kiria Ithica
Summary: Or, how it took Percy and Nico six months to get together. Nico climbs in through the window one day and never leaves. nogods!AU.


**accelerando (or, how percy and nico took six months to get together)**

**by Kiria Ithica / Keryee**

.

It's the July before his first semester of college. The apartment building is blessedly air-conditioned, but even so it's painfully clear that these are the dog days of the year. Summer settles in New York City like a dragon, twining itself around buildings and blowing puffs of parched breath into every nook and cranny until there's nowhere left to hide from the heat wave. The air hangs hot and heavy over the asphalt roads, seeping into the cracked concrete pavements.

Even in a t-shirt and shorts Percy's sweating. He's standing there in the elevator with an obnoxiously heavy box of knick-knacks in his arms when someone hurtles through the apartment lobby and manages to get an arm between the lift doors before they close completely. The doors open again and there's a kid standing there, doubled over with his hands braced against his knees and gasping for breath.

Percy lifts the box a little higher and tries not to stare too openly. The kid glances up and from the softness of his cheeks he's fifteen, maybe sixteen. His face is bright red from exertion and shiny with sweat, which honestly isn't very surprising, because he's got on a dirty-looking bomber jacket and that thing looks like it could keep him warm in Antarctica.

"Fifth floor," he croaks out, his wiry black hair is falling into his eyes. Percy precariously balances the box on one hand to push the button for the fifth floor. They stand together in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, Percy rocking back and forth on his feet, and then the elevator dings for the forth floor.

Percy jumps and promptly drops the box on his feet. "Fuck," he snaps. The kid snickers, and Percy scowls. The elevator doors open and then close again while he puts everything back in the box.

"Smooth," says the boy. His dark eyes flicker with what looks like amusement. He opens his mouth, like he's going to say something else, and then the elevator dings again. The doors open and he's off like a torpedo again.

Percy's too busy feeling oddly annoyed with the whole situation in general -his throbbing toes in particular- to notice that he's missed his floor until he realizes that he's on the fifteenth floor and the elevator isn't going back down until they reach the top.

It takes him another three trips up and down to get the rest of his stuff into the apartment. He ends up falling asleep on the floor of the room he's designated the bedroom, surrounded by cardboard boxes.

.

The kid's covered in leaves and crawling in through the bedroom window from the fire escape the next time Percy sees him.

It's a week later and he's acquired a bed. It sits in the middle of the bedroom like a boat, afloat in a sea of cardboard. When the kid scrambles down the fire escape and starts picking the lock to the window, Percy's sprawled out on it with his marine biology textbook, struggling to get through the first chapter so that Annabeth will shut up about him not taking college seriously. He looks up at the sound of the lock clicking and stares open-mouthed at the intruder.

The kid is surprisingly nonchalant about breaking and entering. He scuffs his shoes on the floor and doesn't even seem to realize that he has company until he looks up and sees Percy gaping at him. "Oh," he says, irritatingly calm. "You're the guy who dropped a box on his foot last week. I didn't realize someone had moved in here."

"I moved in last week," says Percy. "You made me miss my floor."

"I didn't make you miss your floor," The boy shoves his hands in the pockets of his bomber jacket. In the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the open window his skin is olive, and Percy vaguely wonders if he's Mediterranean. "You missed it all by yourself."

"What are you doing in my apartment?"

The boy's eyes flash. They're red around the edges, like he's been crying. His face twists into a scowl. "I'm just leaving, actually," he says, turning to go, and suddenly Percy knows that look, that scowl, that resentment and achingly familiar loneliness.

"Wait," Percy says impulsively. "I'm Percy. I live in this apartment. Nice to meet you."

The boy pauses, and there's a strange look in his eyes. "Nico," he says shortly. "I live in the apartment above yours."

Then he climbs back out the window and is gone.

.

"How was your day, sweetie?" says Sally Jackson over the phone later that day, because Percy's the kind of momma's boy that calls his mother every day before he goes to bed. Her voice is a little crackly over the line. "Are you moving in okay?"

"It was fine," Percy says. He's lying on the bed and staring at the tobacco smoke stains on the ceiling. A pair of heavy smokers used to live in this apartment, according to the management, but it's been a few years since they've moved out and the stench of cigarettes has long since dissipated. "A kid named Nico broke into my house. He came in through the fire escape."

"Oh," says Sally, and Percy feels a pang of homesickness. Her voice sounds like home and blue-dyed chicken pot pie, hot out of the oven. "Did he steal anything?"

"He left right away. He lives in the apartment above mine, apparently."

"You should invite him over for dinner!" Sally says, and it's a testament to how well she knows her son that she doesn't immediately assume that Percy _dislikes _the boy: when Percy was a little kid, he used to bring home stray cats, even when they left long red scratches all the way up his arms

"Mom, I can't cook," Percy says, and the matter is dropped.

.

July bleeds into August, and by the time Percy's nineteenth birthday has come and gone, he's finished unpacking all the boxes and has somehow managed to scrape up enough money for halfway decent furnishing. Leo calls him up to offer to throw him in some shady bar in Quebec since nineteen's the legal drinking age in Canada, but the last of Percy's money went into buying a fridge and so he's too broke to afford any illegal ventures across the Canadian border. A couple days before his first day of college Percy comes back from the grocery store and finds Nico sprawled out on the sofa with his sock-clad feet in the air and one arm over his face.

"There's no food in your fridge," Nico says bluntly.

"I know. I'm a broke-ass college student, remember? All I can afford is instant noodles," says Percy. He waves the plastic bag of cheap cup noodles in his left hand for emphasis. "I don't even have enough money for takeout."

"Whatever," Nico says. He crosses his arms, and Percy has to bite his lip not to laugh. Nico is every inch the petulant teenager. "Give me one of those, then."

"Sure, if you take off that stupid jacket. It's a miracle you haven't gotten heat stroke yet," says Percy. "I'm sweating just looking at you." He wipes his brow with his right hand, shows Nico the dampness. To tell the truth, the real reason Percy's sweating is that the grocery store's air conditioning unit is broken again, but Nico doesn't need to know that.

Nico flushes dark red and shrugs off his jacket. He's painfully thin, stretched-out in the way that teenaged boys tend to be, all long limbs and messy hair and poky ribs. He raises his chin defiantly, his shoulders tense with his wariness.

Percy chucks the grocery bag at Nico and crosses the room, throwing himself down on the couch. "Jesus, you're skinny," he says. "Take two. My mom will never forgive me if I don't fatten you up."

"Fuck you," says Nico, but he takes two anyway, and they spend the night eating instant noodles together in companionable silence.

Percy starts leaving the window unlocked.

.

Nico drops into Percy's life like an inkwell sent flying off a desk and then stays, seeping into the woodwork and leaving a stain that's never going to come out.

September comes and drags with it the reopening of both colleges and high schools, and then in what Percy is starting to understand is typical Nico-ish fashion, the prickly little bastard starts making himself at home in Percy's apartment.

Nico lounging cat-like on Percy's bed with homework in hand becomes a fairly typical occurrence maybe once a week, and of course that means the mandatory jokes about them being in bed together and everything, because they're both guys, and making jokes about sex is just what guys do. After the fifth time or so the jokes trickle to an end, though, because even a funny joke gets old if you repeat it enough times, and then it becomes the norm for Percy to just settle in besides Nico and pull out his textbook too, no speaking required.

They play video games together on Sundays. Nico brings his 3DS and they play Monster Hunter until they're thoroughly sick of slicing down giant monster after giant monster, and then Percy laughs at Nico for admitting that his favorite game is actually Harvest Moon until his sides hurt. He buys chocolate chip cookies and douses them with blue food dye, and Nico makes fun of him for it but eats them anyway.

Maybe it's a little weird, that Percy just accepts that there's a kid breaking into his house on a pretty regular basis, but Nico isn't _stealing_ anything, and… well.

It feels nice, good in a way that Percy doesn't know how to put into words, coming home to something other than an empty house, and Nico's pretty decent company once he's loosened up a bit. He's an easy person to be around: there when you want him to be, and practically invisible when you don't. Percy barely even notices that the kid's coming over practically every night until he really is coming over every night, and by that point it's kind of too late to say something.

So they fall into a routine, and it feels natural, almost biological in origin. And, well, if Nico's history and motive for spending every night with the guy who lives in the apartment downstairs is still a bit of a mystery, well. It doesn't really seem to matter all that much, somehow.

Percy goes with the flow, and things are good.

.

It's October and the leaves on the trees have all gone gold and red when Percy comes home again to find Nico and Annabeth giving each other the stink-eye over his kitchen table. He isn't sure what's going on, but he's almost certain that he doesn't like it, because Annabeth Chase is a force of nature unto herself, and Nico's got a pretty formidable death glare too.

Nico flounces off in a huff pretty shortly after that (out the window, as usual), and Percy doesn't blame him: Annabeth's most menacing stare makes her look more like a disgruntled cat than anything else, but it somehow manages to be terrifying regardless. After he's gone Annabeth drags him into the sitting room and sits him down on the couch.

"We need to talk," she says very seriously in her best best-friend voice.

"What are you even doing here?" Percy replies. "Aren't you supposed to be in Yale right now?"

Annabeth rolls her eyes. Even though there's no way their relationship could be _more _platonic, Percy isn't ashamed of admitting that she's beautiful even like this, in sweatpants and with her blonde hair escaping her ponytail. Annabeth is all sunshine and blue eyes and tanned skin: she's the kind of girl who could look beautiful even if she was wearing a potato sack.

"Yeah," she says, "But it's a long weekend, so I'm here to visit. Now, do you want to tell me why I got here and there was a teenage boy climbing in through your window, Percy?"

"He lives upstairs," says Percy.

"I get that. I mean, he climbed off the fire escape to get to the window," Annabeth says patiently. "But why the window?"

"Because he doesn't have the key to the door," Percy says matter-of-factly. "And so he gets in through the window."

She rolls her eyes. "Percy, the kid from upstairs comes in and out of your apartment as he pleases, and you don't see anything weird about that? What's his name?"

"Nico."

"Nico what?"

Percy pauses. "That's… a very good question."

"What? Percy! You're kidding me, right?"

"No?" he says.

Annabeth growls and throws her hands up into the air, but it's more exasperated than anything. "I give up," she says melodramatically. "I give up, Percy Jackson. You are unbelievable. What if he's a serial killer? What if he's planning to steal all your silverware? What if he takes creepy pictures of you in your sleep?"

"Annabeth, I don't have any silverware." Percy says, his voice perfectly serious, and she makes a frustrated noise.

"That's what you latch onto? The thing about the silverware?"

He manages to keep a straight face for all of two minutes, and then they're both laughing helplessly, the tension all but dissolved.

When she leaves she shakes her head at him a little ruefully, but gives him a hug anyway.

.

"Issheyourgirlfriend," says Nico out of the blue exactly six days later. The words come out mumbled and all too fast, so Percy has no idea what he's saying the first time round.

It's Friday night and they're squished together on the couch with a big bowl of ridiculously buttery popcorn, in the middle of a horror movie marathon.

"Huh?" Percy says, very intelligently, a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth.

"_Is she your girlfriend?"_ Nico repeats, scowling, and refuses to meet Percy's eyes. He needs a haircut, Percy notices, because his hair is starting to get all shaggy, like a dog's. "Well? Is she?"

Percy blinks. "Who?"

"That girl. The one who was in your apartment last Saturday."

"What, Annabeth?" Percy says, perplexed.

"How should I know?" Nico sighs, exasperated. "The angry blonde chick, alright?"

"Oh. Yeah, that's Annabeth," says Percy, a little perplexed. "She's not my girlfriend."

"Soon to be girlfriend? Friend-with-benefits?"

"Um… no."

"She had the key to your apartment," Nico presses mulishly.

Percy huffs. "She's my best friend, okay? She goes to Yale. I dated her once when we were sixteen or something, and we broke up a week later," he says, a little irritated by Nico's apparent interest in Annabeth and not quite sure why. "She has a boyfriend too, some kid called Malcolm. They look creepily alike, and talk about architecture all the time."

Nico looks up at him and Percy notices for the first time that Nico's got long, thick eyelashes. He's close enough that he can count them. "So she's not your girlfriend?"

"No! What the hell, Nico?" he says. "Do you have a crush on her or something?"

"Not on her," says Nico, and flushes dark red. For a moment he looks like he wants to say something else, but then he turns away and unpauses the movie.

Later on Percy will look back on this movie marathon and wonder when his life started coming with foreshadowing. But for now, he turns back to the movie, happily oblivious.

Halfway through Percy puts his arm around Nico and falls asleep on his shoulder. After the movie's done, they finish off the last of the popcorn and Percy nags Nico until he agrees to play twenty questions. Nico thinks twenty questions is the dumbest game on the planet and was invented to help stalkers find out creepy facts about their targets in the least subtle way possible, but he gives in and plays anyway.

.

1) Nico's last name is di Angelo.

2) His sixteenth birthday was a couple months ago, in May.

3) He's not Mediterranean after all.

4) His mother was Italian and got into a car accident before he was even old enough to remember her face.

5) Yes, he speaks fluent Italian.

6) He's got two sisters: there's Bianca, who's part of some all-girl motorcycle gang and is currently biking around the country, and then there's his half sister Hazel, who makes jewelry for a living.

7) His dad's a banker.

8) His stepmom's named Persephone and she runs a flower shop.

9) He's allergic to pollen. Persephone is a bitch.

10) His worst subject in school is probably history.

11) His favorite color is green.

12) He used to have a dog but it died.

13) He can't stand prawns.

14) He collects Mythomagic figurines. His favorite one's the Hades figurine, but the Poseidon one's pretty cool too.

15) He-

"Shut up, Percy," says Annabeth with a sigh. "I don't even care anymore. You're an idiot, okay? We've already established that."

Percy laughs into the phone until she hangs up.

.

In November the leaves all fall off the trees and leave New York City with a thick papery carpet, red and yellow and brown. The leaves are pretty cool at first but then they start getting everywhere and by the middle of the month everyone is thoroughly sick of them. Winter coats start coming out of closets and that one irritating guy who lives in the other apartment on Percy's floor begins to put up his Christmas decorations.

It's a Wednesday and Percy's just wrapping a towel around his waist, hair damp and body still slick with water, when Nico bursts into the bathroom.

The kid nearly slips on the wet floor but regains his balance pretty quickly, and then stops and stares at Percy with a kind of hungry fascination. Percy squirms a little. Nico looks at people like a scientist looks at a rare butterfly, and his scrutiny makes Percy feel like he's being pinned to a corkboard and having a bright light shone on him.

To be honest it's nothing that Nico hasn't seen before, though. Percy's anatomy is pretty much the same as Nico's, after all: they're both of the same species and the same gender to boot, and that generally tends to be the main factor in what your anatomy looks like. Besides, Nico has seen Percy with his shirt off on multiple occasions.

But something about this -the steam fogging up the bathroom mirror maybe, or the hot, wet air thick and heavy on Percy's naked back- makes it feel about a hundred times as embarrassing.

Nico's feeling it too: he keeps looking between Percy and the door, like he's not sure whether he wants to stay or to bolt right back out again.

"Um," says Percy, just to break the silence, which is more than a little uncomfortable. "Why are you in the bathroom with me?"

It's almost annoying how quickly Nico regains his cool: a second later his voice is perfectly steady and he's focusing almost on Percy's eyes. "Oh. Your mom called. She said she wanted to talk to you."

"Right," says Percy, and goes to find the phone.

He feels the weight of Nico's gaze on his back as he goes, and it sends a shiver up his spine.

.

"So I spoke to your friend Nico on the phone just now," says Sally. "It was lovely getting to know him, especially since you're always talking about him. You know, I was a little worried about you being so far away from Annabeth since she's going to Yale now."

"You were?" Percy says.

Sally hums in agreement. "She's always been your best friend, so I wasn't sure how you'd cope, but I'm glad you're meeting new people."

"He's a great kid."

"How old is he? Sixteen, seventeen?"

"Sixteen," says Percy.

"He's hardly a little boy, then," says Sally, and there's an odd satisfaction in her voice. "That's only three years younger than you. Sixteen's the age of consent in Massachusetts, I think. By the way, you don't have a girlfriend yet, right?"

"What?"

"Nothing, dear."

.

Maybe it's because of the shower incident, or because of his conversation with his mother –which left him with the deep, unsettling feeling that Sally was implying a little more than Nico's suitability as a friend- but suddenly Percy's started to _notice _Nico, and as it happens, Nico's an attractive guy, bright eyes and sharp teeth and wicked smile.

That isn't even the problem, though. The problem is that once he's _started_ noticing, he can't stop.

They'll be playing video games together, and Nico will shift a little and his shirt will ride up, and then Percy'll see Nico's hipbones, prominent on his skinny frame and peeking out from under his jeans, or the fine bones of his fingers, knuckles white from gripping the controller too tightly. Sometimes Nico throws his head back to laugh about something, and the sound will catch Percy off guard so much that he'll drop whatever he happens to be holding. This ends up being annoying at best (when the dropped object is a newspaper or a pillow) and disastrous at worst (when the object is fragile and contains scalding hot liquid, like Percy's coffee mug).

So Percy braves Nico's scathing and somewhat confused glares, and he tiptoes around the other boy for a week or two, blushing and stammering like a schoolgirl with a crush. November fades into December and school lets out, and then it's just too tiring to keep it up, so they fall back into their usual patterns, leaving them both of them bewildered and almost pathetically grateful.

With December comes Christmas time, and suddenly the weird guy on Percy's floor isn't the only one with Christmas decorations up. On Saturday Percy drags Nico to the store to buy cheap fairy lights, a fake tree and some craft paper, and then they spend the day decorating the apartment. Nico turns out to be surprisingly handy with the craft paper and ends up making a goofy looking snowman that Percy tapes to the door.

Sally invites them both (both!) over for Christmas dinner, but Nico has to respectfully decline: both of his sisters are coming home for the holiday, and so he's spending Christmas dinner with his family. It's alright, though, because Sally completely understands, and suggests Boxing Day instead.

The day before Christmas Eve Percy finds himself drifting onto Fifth Avenue and into Macy's, drawn like a moth to flame by the holiday displays in the windows. He pushes through throngs of people and first heads down to the housewares section on the basement floor, where he buys a ceramic ladle for Sally, and then takes the escalators up to the first floor, where he gets a tie for Paul. Christmas shopping is expensive, and he can almost hear his wallet crying.

He spends another two hours wandering around, looking for something to get for Nico. He considers getting him a new jacket, but clothes cost a lot and it doesn't really feel quite right anyway.

Eventually, while he's wandering the seventh floor, he gives up on finding the perfect gift and just pulls a teddy bear off the shelf. "Gift wrap that, please?" he says to the girl behind the counter, a little embarrassed because there's no way he'll be able to do it himself.

"For your girlfriend?" she says with a wink, and when he turns red and starts stammering she laughs and chooses a garishly pink wrapping paper covered in hearts.

.

The thing is, Nico's very attractive now that Percy looks properly, but there's a difference between just thinking a person's attractive and actually caring about them, wanting to hold their hand and put your arm around them and make them smile. Percy wants to do all that and more.

"I think I'm in love with Nico di Angelo," he tells Annabeth over the phone, because he's always been a pretty honest guy, and even if he wasn't you doesn't lie to Annabeth, period.

"I knew it," she says immediately, and she sounds vaguely irritated. "God, Percy, you've got a thing for difficult people, don't you?"

"I had a thing for you, didn't I?"

"Well, Percy Jackson, I'm a pretty difficult girl myself," Annabeth says fondly. "Go get him, okay?"

.

On Christmas day –because presents should be opened on Christmas day, no sooner, no later- Percy opens his bedroom window and climbs out onto the fire escape.

It's the most terrifying thing he's ever done. Percy has never really been a big fan of heights (the one time Sally took him to see the view from the Empire State Building, he ended up so nauseous he puked up his lunch) and so he closes his eyes and feels his way up until he's outside Nico's window.

The gift-wrapped teddy bear feels like it's burning a hole in the oddly large pocket of his hoodie. He'd been thinking of just leaving the present on the window sill for Nico to find, but a quick check reveals that the window's unlocked, so he opens it up and crawls inside.

The room he ends up in definitely belongs to Nico because his stuff's all over the place, though Percy wonders who exactly did the interior decorating. The walls are all painted black and plastered with posters for heavy metal bands, so the whole room looks like a cave, or maybe a shrine to Metallica. The bed's unmade and covered in clothes. On the nightstand, there's a picture of a much younger Nico with a pair of girls: one who looks almost exactly like him, and one who doesn't resemble him at all. Next to it there's a bouquet of goldenrod, chrysanthemum and daisies shedding pollen all over the place.

Percy puts the present gently on the nightstand with the bouquet and the photograph and starts to inch back to the window, careful not to disturb anything, when he hears footsteps.

If that isn't a bad sign when you've just broken into someone else's house, Percy doesn't know what is. He swears, maybe a little too loudly, and throws himself under Nico's bed.

His shirt is riding up and the hardwood floor is cold against his exposed skin. It's dusty under the bed, and Percy feels a sudden, damning urge to sneeze.

The door creaks open. Someone walks in, and then it creaks back shut. He hears a sigh.

"Percy," says Nico. "Why are you under my bed." It's more a statement than a question, and the exasperation in Nico's voice makes Percy feel uncharacteristically childish.

"I'm looking for El Dorando," Percy says, but he crawls out from under the bed anyway. "Nice room, by the way."

"Thanks," says Nico. "It's kind of like a Anyway, what are you doing here?"

Percy holds up the present in all its terrifyingly pink glory. "Merry Christmas," he says. "This is for you."

Caught off guard, Nico gapes at him for a few seconds. Then he reigns himself in and promptly starts doing his best to bristle like he's a porcupine or something. "I didn't get you a present," he says, and it's clear he's trying to come across as angry but his voice suddenly sounds so small. "You shouldn't have gotten me one."

"I wanted to," says Percy. "I don't need anything in return."

Nico stares at him, and his eyes are wide and dark and big. "Why?" he says.

"Because you're important to me, and I care about you." Percy puts the present down on the bed and laughs, a little ruefully. "Apparently I have a thing for difficult people."

.

On the first day of January, (two days before school starts up again) the snow outside is about a foot thick and there are people outside shoveling away while a snow plough does its best to clear off the roads. About half the building is in bed with a pounding headache: New Year's Eve is always a great excuse to get spectacularly smashed, and this year is no different.

Nico drops by the apartment at about noon. He doesn't use the window for once: he takes the elevator down and rings the doorbell and waits impatiently outside with a package badly wrapped in newspaper in one hand until Percy comes to get the door.

"What's up?" says a very surprised Percy, and Nico shoves the package roughly into the older boy's chest.

"For you," he says. "Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," Percy says, but before the word's even out of his mouth properly Nico's chapped lips are on his and they're stumbling backwards. Nico kicks the door shut and pushes Percy up against the wall by the window.

It's all too clear that he's not very experienced, but sixteen-year-old boys generally tend not to be, and problems like that are easily solved with plenty of practice anyway. As it so happens, Nico makes up for his inexperience with enough enthusiasm to fuel a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, tangling his thin, warm hands in Percy's hair and licking puppy-like at the older boy's mouth.

He pulls away with his face flushed red, and his eyes are glittering and determined. "Date me," he says, insufferably blunt as usual and it's so like him it makes Percy want to laugh, or maybe just kiss him even more. "I know you want to, you watch me all the time, and I've had a crush on you since the first time I climbed in through your window. I'll be a good boyfriend, I promise."

"Okay," Percy says, and pulls Nico close to kiss him until they both lose their balance and fall, a tangle of limbs and laughter in the afternoon sunlight.

.

The next day Percy opens the package while he's looking for movies to watch with Nico, and it's the most demonic-looking teddy bear he's ever seen in his life. He laughs until his sides ache and Nico comes in from the other room to see what the hold up is.


End file.
